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Gob's Grief
In the summer of 1863, Gob and Tomo Woodhull, eleven-year-old twin sons of Victoria Woodhull, agree to together forsake their home and family in Licking County, Ohio, for the glories of the Union Army. But on the night of their departure for the war, Gob suffers a change of heart, and Tomo is forced to leave his brother behind. Tomo falls in as a bugler with the Ninth Ohio Volunteers and briefly revels in camp life; but when he is shot clean through the eye in his very first battle, Gob is left to endure the guilt and grief that will later come to fuel his obsession with building a vast machine that will bring Tomo–indeed, all the Civil War dead–back to life.
Epic in scope yet emotionally intimate, Gob’s Grief creates a world both fantastic and familiar and populates it with characters who breath on the page, capturing the spirit of a fevered nation populated with lost brothers and lost souls.
Epic in scope yet emotionally intimate, Gob’s Grief creates a world both fantastic and familiar and populates it with characters who breath on the page, capturing the spirit of a fevered nation populated with lost brothers and lost souls.
387 pages, Paperback
First published May 19, 1999
22 people are currently reading
717 people want to read
About the author
Chris Adrian
27 books200 followersChris Adrian was born in Washington D.C. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he attended Harvard Divinity School, and is currently a pediatric fellow at UCSF. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2009. In 2010, he was chosen as one of the 20 best writers under 40 by The New Yorker.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 92 reviews
October 26, 2007
Not nearly as wonderful as Children's Hospital, but still quite good. For awhile I thought this was going to be a five star book, but the bottom sort of dropped out of it towards the end, but not in too major of a way. This book really needs to have a new blurb written on it, and maybe the cover changed (especially on the paperback), since making this book seem like a Civil War novel is like saying that Gravity's Rainbow is about World War 2. Actually the Pynchon book is so much more about a war than this, and really is GR really about the war? Anyway, this isn't a war novel, even if the cover makes it look like it could be on the bookshelf comfortably next to something by Jeffery Shaaaaaara, or Newt Gingrich.
January 14, 2009
Well, I feel bad because this book has gotten really high marks and excellent reviews on this site. But after reading half of it, I just didnt find it all that interesting. The writing isn't lacking, the characters aren't ill conceived nor poorly developed. Just didn't seem like much...happened. And maybe the second half is a barn burner, but working at a library, I'm tempted by books at every turn and sometimes my will is weak. I'll try and stay true next time Gob, if you'll have me back.
December 14, 2009
A compelling premise undermined by a lack of imaginative language, by structural shortcomings, and by unfulfilled expectations.
The gothic ideas put forth are exciting, and the author does not shrink from depictions of the grotesque, but I was hoping for more precise and lyrical language. There are outbursts of the kind of writing I expected from the novel, but their presence only highlights the absence of consistently good writing.
Much of the best writing comes about 100 pages into the novel, in a particular section. This becomes the core of the novel, around which the rest has been hung like cheap tinsel. The first few times the story breaks from one point of view and begins anew from another, it is able to maintain both my interest and its own narrative momentum, but by the final shift, to the perspective of a flat character whose rational skepticism is meant to temper the questionable sanity of her companions, my interest in the story skids to a halt (much like this overlong sentence).
This novel's ending is exquisite in a way, but it is not the ending set up by the preceding narrative. Gob is a man whose considerable charm and passionate belief in a patently absurd notion is enough to overwhelm both his own rational mind and the skepticism of the otherwise (mostly) sane people he meets. Whether he succeeds or fails is in many ways a secondary concern. But the manner in which he succeeds or fails (pardon my ambiguity, in consideration of those who may yet read the novel and wish to do so unspoiled) is unearned by the bounds of his quest. It's a pity; I would have liked to read the ending to this novel, and I would have liked to read the novel to which this ending should be attached.
The gothic ideas put forth are exciting, and the author does not shrink from depictions of the grotesque, but I was hoping for more precise and lyrical language. There are outbursts of the kind of writing I expected from the novel, but their presence only highlights the absence of consistently good writing.
Much of the best writing comes about 100 pages into the novel, in a particular section. This becomes the core of the novel, around which the rest has been hung like cheap tinsel. The first few times the story breaks from one point of view and begins anew from another, it is able to maintain both my interest and its own narrative momentum, but by the final shift, to the perspective of a flat character whose rational skepticism is meant to temper the questionable sanity of her companions, my interest in the story skids to a halt (much like this overlong sentence).
This novel's ending is exquisite in a way, but it is not the ending set up by the preceding narrative. Gob is a man whose considerable charm and passionate belief in a patently absurd notion is enough to overwhelm both his own rational mind and the skepticism of the otherwise (mostly) sane people he meets. Whether he succeeds or fails is in many ways a secondary concern. But the manner in which he succeeds or fails (pardon my ambiguity, in consideration of those who may yet read the novel and wish to do so unspoiled) is unearned by the bounds of his quest. It's a pity; I would have liked to read the ending to this novel, and I would have liked to read the novel to which this ending should be attached.
November 10, 2016
This was an accidental and unlikely read, a random grab at the library, that turned out to be a complete joy. It's sold as a historical novel, set in the aftermath of the American Civil War, and so it is, to the same extent that Moby Dick is about catching whales.
Gob's twin brother Tomo runs off to join the fight one fateful night in 1863, aged 11, and is ingloriously killed like so many others a few weeks later. Gob is prostrated with grief and guilt and devotes his life thereafter to cheating death and resurrecting the fallen. With the help of three other grieving souls - the poet Walt Whitman, doctor and photographer Will Fie and Maci Trufant, an activist for women's rights - he sets about building a machine that will break down the barrier between life and death.
Gob's Grief is at once a madcap hallucinatory read, filled with magicians, spirits and angels, and a fearless confrontation of mental illness, despair and human folly. It is thoroughly disorienting viewed as a whole, so packed with odd twists and obfuscations. A long reading session left me reeling drunk on it's weird vision of the past. I don't pretend to understand it all. But at the sentence level it is quite brilliant, shrewd and precise. And it gives a lot of space to each character, who has their turn at shaping the point of view. It hums with human detail which adds powerful to its thematic weight.
What I liked most about it though was its unabashed compassion and love. It feels far more expansive and generous to the people in it than 380 pages normally allows for. Largely because, I think, it finds meaning in even the most insane actions. I will definitely be reading more Chris Adrian. Not the most perfect book I have read this year, but one of the most provoking and fulfilling.
Gob's twin brother Tomo runs off to join the fight one fateful night in 1863, aged 11, and is ingloriously killed like so many others a few weeks later. Gob is prostrated with grief and guilt and devotes his life thereafter to cheating death and resurrecting the fallen. With the help of three other grieving souls - the poet Walt Whitman, doctor and photographer Will Fie and Maci Trufant, an activist for women's rights - he sets about building a machine that will break down the barrier between life and death.
Gob's Grief is at once a madcap hallucinatory read, filled with magicians, spirits and angels, and a fearless confrontation of mental illness, despair and human folly. It is thoroughly disorienting viewed as a whole, so packed with odd twists and obfuscations. A long reading session left me reeling drunk on it's weird vision of the past. I don't pretend to understand it all. But at the sentence level it is quite brilliant, shrewd and precise. And it gives a lot of space to each character, who has their turn at shaping the point of view. It hums with human detail which adds powerful to its thematic weight.
What I liked most about it though was its unabashed compassion and love. It feels far more expansive and generous to the people in it than 380 pages normally allows for. Largely because, I think, it finds meaning in even the most insane actions. I will definitely be reading more Chris Adrian. Not the most perfect book I have read this year, but one of the most provoking and fulfilling.
October 9, 2007
A book that sits ambiguously between epic, lyric, and science fiction. Though it's light on the science, often invoking magic as a deus ex machina, it is actually quite heavy on the medicine practices and beliefs of the era.
Grief is the theme that binds all the major characters of this story, tho each one's grief is different and taken on different effects. Interestingly enough, Chris Adrian wrote this out of his own grief for his brother's death. For all its history, its fantasy, and its pathos, truly this book is one of the best examinations of grief upon the living. In this way it is ahistorical.
What I like most about the different griefs of the characters, is that some are world encompassing (Walt Whitman), while others are self-absorbing, limiting, and ultimately self-destructive (Gob).
If your into biography, Adrian wrote this grand work (one of the grandest I've read pre-dating 1969) while in medical school.
I'm keeping an eye on this writer.
Grief is the theme that binds all the major characters of this story, tho each one's grief is different and taken on different effects. Interestingly enough, Chris Adrian wrote this out of his own grief for his brother's death. For all its history, its fantasy, and its pathos, truly this book is one of the best examinations of grief upon the living. In this way it is ahistorical.
What I like most about the different griefs of the characters, is that some are world encompassing (Walt Whitman), while others are self-absorbing, limiting, and ultimately self-destructive (Gob).
If your into biography, Adrian wrote this grand work (one of the grandest I've read pre-dating 1969) while in medical school.
I'm keeping an eye on this writer.
November 17, 2009
A very strange & probably very good book whose strangeness did not particularly appeal to me. Three different characters who have lost brothers in the American Civil War get caught up in Gob's (a fictional son of Victoria Woodhull who also lost a [twin:] brother in the war) effort to build a machine to destroy death & bring the dead back to life. Because of the Woodhull connection, there's lots about postwar social movements such as spiritualism, woman suffrage & women's rights, the Beecher/Tilton scandal, etc. George Minot says all great literature is ultimately about death. I've doubted that, & I'm glad not all good books are as obsessed with death as this one.
January 4, 2022
The concept/plot is very interesting. And at first, I found the execution interesting. Rather than telling the whole story through Gob’s point of view, Adrien tells it though the POV of several central characters. But this style eventually wore on me. We kept circling around the same events from new viewpoints, and I just wanted to get on with the plot.
April 26, 2010
They see (and hear) dead people. Several characters in Chris Adrian's debut novel (2000) are in contact with the dead. Gob Woodhull is not, exactly, but it is Gob's guilt, grief and obsessions with his twin's death — and his desire to bring him back from the dead — that are the fulcrum on which this strong and odd tale turns.
In 1863, Gob's brother, Tomo, runs away from home to join the American Civil War (bugler); Gob chickens out and runs home, and his guilt is all-consuming after Tomo is killed. When the carnage of the war is, at last, over, Gob, making a deal with a strange person/creature/force of nature called the Urfeist, decides to build a machine that will bring back the legions of dead. ("What's grief if not a profound complaint?") Drawn to him in this, er, ambitious endeavor are poet Walt Whitman and war survivor and doctor Will Fie. Whitman, who nursed wounded in the great conflict, hears the voice of a particularly memorable patient he'd watched die. Whitman's very essence is the key to Gob's monstrous, ramshackle machine, but he's torn, understanding Gob's quest while feeling a little horrified. Here's a nice passage from the book as Gob and Whitman explore Washington: "Their marvelous passion would go out from them in waves, transforming time, history, and destiny, unmurdering Lincoln, unfighting the war, unkilling all those six hundred thousand, who would be drawn from death into (Ford's) theater, where they would add their strong arms to the world-changing embrace, until at last a great historic love-pile was gathered in Washington City, a gigantic pearl with Gob and Walt the sand at its center."
Fie is dogged by throngs of the dead eager to return and excitedly encouraging Fie and Gob's project, though there also is a greatly disapproving angel. (Angels, medicine, the dead, fantastical elements amid real life; Adrian's second novel, the superb "The Children's Hospital" contains these elements as well, revealing the obvious obsessions of the author, a doctor). Fie builds a rooftop structure composed of glass photographic plates, images of Civil War dead. These images also help power Gob's machine.
Then there's Maci Trufant, who, like Fie and Gob, has lost a brother. She's inspired by Victoria Woodhull, Gob's mother and a real-life radical feminist (and "free love" advocate) who runs for president long before women's suffrage. Maci is another vital piece in building the machine; her dead brother has taken over use of her left hand, writing messages from the grave and providing direction in bringing back the dead.
Adrian takes us to the brink of the machine's success with Whitman literally at its center, then backtracks and gives us Fie's and Trufont's back stories, holding us at arm's length until near the end. This approach doesn't always work; at times we're as anxious as the dead for the climax. And sometimes it seems as if there are a few too many people with access to the dead here. The fantastical nature of the plot surely will turn some people off, as well; "Gob's Grief" certainly isn't for everyone.
"Gob's Grief" (now out of print, I think) displays first-novel inconsistency, planting seeds of Adrian's brilliance that would flower more fully in "The Children's Hospital." But there is much to admire in this tale of the Civil War, real historical figures, spiritualism, medicine, women's rights, talking dead, sorrow and the very nature of life. It's an often moving, well-written tale (3.5 stars in reality, bumped up for my interest in the Civil War and love of Adrian's second book, I guess) from an author who was then still figuring himself out.
In 1863, Gob's brother, Tomo, runs away from home to join the American Civil War (bugler); Gob chickens out and runs home, and his guilt is all-consuming after Tomo is killed. When the carnage of the war is, at last, over, Gob, making a deal with a strange person/creature/force of nature called the Urfeist, decides to build a machine that will bring back the legions of dead. ("What's grief if not a profound complaint?") Drawn to him in this, er, ambitious endeavor are poet Walt Whitman and war survivor and doctor Will Fie. Whitman, who nursed wounded in the great conflict, hears the voice of a particularly memorable patient he'd watched die. Whitman's very essence is the key to Gob's monstrous, ramshackle machine, but he's torn, understanding Gob's quest while feeling a little horrified. Here's a nice passage from the book as Gob and Whitman explore Washington: "Their marvelous passion would go out from them in waves, transforming time, history, and destiny, unmurdering Lincoln, unfighting the war, unkilling all those six hundred thousand, who would be drawn from death into (Ford's) theater, where they would add their strong arms to the world-changing embrace, until at last a great historic love-pile was gathered in Washington City, a gigantic pearl with Gob and Walt the sand at its center."
Fie is dogged by throngs of the dead eager to return and excitedly encouraging Fie and Gob's project, though there also is a greatly disapproving angel. (Angels, medicine, the dead, fantastical elements amid real life; Adrian's second novel, the superb "The Children's Hospital" contains these elements as well, revealing the obvious obsessions of the author, a doctor). Fie builds a rooftop structure composed of glass photographic plates, images of Civil War dead. These images also help power Gob's machine.
Then there's Maci Trufant, who, like Fie and Gob, has lost a brother. She's inspired by Victoria Woodhull, Gob's mother and a real-life radical feminist (and "free love" advocate) who runs for president long before women's suffrage. Maci is another vital piece in building the machine; her dead brother has taken over use of her left hand, writing messages from the grave and providing direction in bringing back the dead.
Adrian takes us to the brink of the machine's success with Whitman literally at its center, then backtracks and gives us Fie's and Trufont's back stories, holding us at arm's length until near the end. This approach doesn't always work; at times we're as anxious as the dead for the climax. And sometimes it seems as if there are a few too many people with access to the dead here. The fantastical nature of the plot surely will turn some people off, as well; "Gob's Grief" certainly isn't for everyone.
"Gob's Grief" (now out of print, I think) displays first-novel inconsistency, planting seeds of Adrian's brilliance that would flower more fully in "The Children's Hospital." But there is much to admire in this tale of the Civil War, real historical figures, spiritualism, medicine, women's rights, talking dead, sorrow and the very nature of life. It's an often moving, well-written tale (3.5 stars in reality, bumped up for my interest in the Civil War and love of Adrian's second book, I guess) from an author who was then still figuring himself out.
May 27, 2013
I really liked this book. It was written by an old friend of mine from the University of Florida (we haven't talked in 25 years, so our ancient friendship did not influence this review.) It's not a book I would normally have read based on the setting and back cover blurb, but it drew me in from the start with the lyrical writing and the way it made me feel like I was part of every scene going on. The author put a twist on historical events, introducing characters like Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman as well as fictional characters I loved, like Gob and Tomo and the whole cray-cray Woodhull family.
I gave it four stars instead of five because I had an occasional uncomfortable feeling of being lost and flailing as it jumped around in history and introduced characters I didn't recognize, but that was more than counterbalanced by the wonderful moments that made me THINK.
This was one of those books that made me feel profoundly human and made me ponder life, and choices, and chance, and love. When I got to the end I felt changed, which is one of the great gifts you can get from a book.
Don't be scared away by my feeling of being lost...that is part of the magic of the book and it's really very readable. Just occasionally surprising and even shocking...but that's fun. Beautiful, thoughtful, well crafted. If you want a break from summer potboilers and you want a book that's fun to read but will still help you ponder life and death and the meaning of this big wide world, read this book. It will stay with you.
I gave it four stars instead of five because I had an occasional uncomfortable feeling of being lost and flailing as it jumped around in history and introduced characters I didn't recognize, but that was more than counterbalanced by the wonderful moments that made me THINK.
This was one of those books that made me feel profoundly human and made me ponder life, and choices, and chance, and love. When I got to the end I felt changed, which is one of the great gifts you can get from a book.
Don't be scared away by my feeling of being lost...that is part of the magic of the book and it's really very readable. Just occasionally surprising and even shocking...but that's fun. Beautiful, thoughtful, well crafted. If you want a break from summer potboilers and you want a book that's fun to read but will still help you ponder life and death and the meaning of this big wide world, read this book. It will stay with you.
April 9, 2013
The first 20 pages or so blew me away, but after that I don't remember what happened. I read it a long time ago.
There was a rash of stories at that time of young, much sought after writers writing novels where the same story is told several times from different perspectives. This is one of those. Alongside The God of Small Things, which I also had no use for - so take that into consideration.
I tested my assessment by making my mother try to read it and she still talks about it as one of my most disastrous recommendations to her.
Perhaps, when writers write the same story several times, it's just because they aren't quite ready to graduate to novels.
I don't know.
But I will say I was excited to read the part narrated by Walt Whitman, but I will now admonish writers everywhere not to make beloved and fascinating historical figures your narrator in any part of your books unless you're very, very confident that you can blow your reader's away with it.
There was a rash of stories at that time of young, much sought after writers writing novels where the same story is told several times from different perspectives. This is one of those. Alongside The God of Small Things, which I also had no use for - so take that into consideration.
I tested my assessment by making my mother try to read it and she still talks about it as one of my most disastrous recommendations to her.
Perhaps, when writers write the same story several times, it's just because they aren't quite ready to graduate to novels.
I don't know.
But I will say I was excited to read the part narrated by Walt Whitman, but I will now admonish writers everywhere not to make beloved and fascinating historical figures your narrator in any part of your books unless you're very, very confident that you can blow your reader's away with it.
June 4, 2009
Chris Adrian is inscrutable. When he wrote this book, he was working on his now-complete medical education; since then he's finished his residency, gone to divinity school, and recieved a Guggenheim Fellowship The unitary vision that must underlie this tale -- of 19th century pseudo-science, suffrage, disassembled theology, necromancy (seriously!), moral compasses fluttered free from their moorings, and the sundering of brothers (issuing, of course, from that great and terrible sundering of brothers, the Civil War) -- seems in many ways to be so alien as to be tantalizingly forever out of reach. This makes Adrian one of the more fascinating authors today: even so shambling and imperfect book as this (or, better, his second novel, the Children's Hospital) is unique and fascinating and suggestive of a significant but yet-unmapped body of future work.
March 23, 2024
I gave the first star because, as a piece of literature, it was well written. I liked that the point of view changed for each section. I gave the second star because it was full of awesome vocabulary. I love learning new vocabulary.
I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. It was a dark novel. Granted, my opinions are what most would call conservative, but I didn't find anything wholesome or valuable in the story. I did find: obsessive relationships; a depressing, hopeless view of death; child masturbation; violence (not surprisingly - the first part is about war); ritualistic use of body parts from the dead; cannibalism; and from what I could tell, implicit child molestation or abuse. I read to the end to figure out what exactly the lesson or theme about death was. I'd still like to know how the author feels about it. Again, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. It was a dark novel. Granted, my opinions are what most would call conservative, but I didn't find anything wholesome or valuable in the story. I did find: obsessive relationships; a depressing, hopeless view of death; child masturbation; violence (not surprisingly - the first part is about war); ritualistic use of body parts from the dead; cannibalism; and from what I could tell, implicit child molestation or abuse. I read to the end to figure out what exactly the lesson or theme about death was. I'd still like to know how the author feels about it. Again, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
September 28, 2009
The novel has a little unnecessary repetition, because of the way the author follows multiple narrative threads through the same chunk of time. But despite this minor flaw, it is some of the most deeply moving prose I've ever read. In part I think that stems from the startling amount of historical and psychological accuracy Chris Adrian achieves. He gets you into the mind of Walt Whitman, takes you convincingly through the building of an elaborate "grieving machine" that will bring back the Civil War dead, brings to life the imaginary aborted bastard child of Henry Ward Beecher. In short, his language is transformative; it convinces you of the reality of the novel's world. It is accurate in the deepest sense of accuracy.
February 9, 2013
I really wanted to like this book. There were parts I loved, but over-all it was not an enjoyable read. It was simply hard for me to stay focused. I wonder if I tried reading it a second time I would appreciate it more.
July 22, 2014
One of those books where I have to remind myself that life it too short to force myself to finish. I'll give it two stars because although I couldn't finish it, the writing was lovely and I did feel for the characters, just not enough to continue.
Read
February 28, 2009Although I loved Loved LOVED Chris Adrain's later work, I couldn't finish this one. The characters just slipped out of my grasp. I couldn't remember them from page to page.
September 13, 2012
I don't know what to think so far. I both like and do not like this book. I cannot be more specific at this time.
January 4, 2013
Weird, historically playful, and very, very beautiful.
July 9, 2017
The book gets off to a promising start when Gob and his brother Tomo set out to join the Union army. Then the story switches to Walt Whitman helping injured soldiers in a New York hospital. Then it switches again, to Gob's efforts to build a machine that will bring back the dead. There are dead brothers and angels, two of Adrian's recurring themes. His imagination is unmatched, but a byproduct of this might be the book's eventual lack of focus. The transition of Gob's family, the Woodhulls, from poor Ohio farmers to wealthy New York sophisticates seems abrupt and poorly explained. There are many characters, tenuously linked by their shared grief over lost siblings, but the last third of the book becomes bogged down in the women's suffrage movement of the late 1800's. Despite these detours, Adrian's writing is always lively.
October 19, 2020
Well .... it was a struggle to read and finish. I didn't enjoy it, and thought for the first time in maybe 40 years of stopping reading a novel in mid-book. But, out of sheer stubbornness I soldiered on. Yes, I can see how it is considered very imaginative and the characters are pretty interesting, and it was on occasion potentially thought-provoking, but for the most part it was just strange and sometimes hard to follow. I'd have awarded one star except that there were some very clever concepts and descriptions. Overall, meh.
May 1, 2021
DNF. When I first began this book and then over a fourth of the way through, I was entranced. Then as it got grislier and weirder, I decided to stop. I read over 200 pages, but I decided when you're trying to read a story that you dread returning to, and makes you feel absolutely quesy, you should stop. From reading other reviews, however, I'd definitely like to read Children's Hospital. He is a beautiful writer.
June 3, 2018
Endless seesaw of dialogue and exposition written in a tired contemporary tone that is appallingly anachronistic, the author has a tendency to elaborate on details too tedious for us to care, if anyone calls this lyrical the choir master must be blind and singers merely deaf.
November 12, 2024
There’s a lot of arduous passages to get through but the overall conceit, about one man’s dedicated passion to bring back his brother from the dead, was powerful enough to keep me going. A lot of really transcendent, beautiful meditations on death and grief and I really enjoyed it for that.
July 25, 2017
Interesting premise, but not great execution.
May 22, 2018
Loved his style of writing, but this is a bloody weird book. I am not sure even now whether I liked it, but I am interested in reading more by Chris Adrian.
April 4, 2020
Het boek is wat langdradig en mij te fantaststisch
Want to read
May 19, 2020Ben Wise highly recommends
July 7, 2021
Whew. One of my favorite books of the year. Deranged, surreal, and deeply moving.
January 4, 2022
One of the best books I ever read.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 92 reviews